Nike Using Kara Goucher in Ad Campaign (With a Fake Photo)

I saw this at a store too. You can't see it in this picture, but the racing bib is from indoor nationals. It didn't look there was any photo trickery though. I think she just kept her race # from indoors and pinned it to some XC outfit for a Nike photoshoot.

I've seen the same thing, of Adam Goucher in Nike camgaign. Same US outdoor bib, same cross-country uniform and background.

Definitely a slow news day here at Letsrun.

Wait, you mean to tell me Nike staged a photo for an advertising campaign? Next you're going to tell me that Bob Kennedy, Michael Johnson, and a bunch of Kenyans didn't join in on one guy's morning run for a Nike ad. I don't know how I'll sleep tonight.

There's no trickery or Photoshop involved. Kara simply wore a USA uniform to a Nike photo shoot. You are able to wear the uniforms outside of competition! Shocking! And instead of taking the time to mock up a number for one photo shoot, they had Kara bring one of her old numbers.

That said, it's a nice photo, and in a high-traffic location to boot. Most people won't know who she is, but it's nice to see Nike using athletes other than Lebron, Melo, and LDT in ads.

Saw the ad while shopping in Atlanta.

By the way... next time you're at the Boston Expo, save your money. Spouse and I keep finding official Adidas Boston Marathon merchandise on the racks at TJ Maxx (one in Atlanta; one in Denver). Thought that was somewhat humorous.

It doesn't appear that she is wearing racing shoes either.

The whole picture is probably an assortment of portions of other pictures.

I think this is what I am going to start doing. Instead of actually running races anymore, I am going to just get a good picture of me and photoshop myself into photos of various marathons. When a coworker asks why my name is not in the results, I will just tell him that is strange, and show him the picture of me beating Ryan Hall at the Marathon Trials. It will look doubley weird when Hall is celebrating a mile out, and there I am beating him. Nobody can argue with photographic evidence.

hatemetoday wrote:

I think this is what I am going to start doing. Instead of actually running races anymore, I am going to just get a good picture of me and photoshop myself into photos of various marathons.

Actually, if you win a bronze at the world champs, Nike will take you out and do photoshoots of you. Pretty clearly that is what is going on here.

I don't think it is a big deal. Am I supposed to be appalled that a multinational corporation fudged a photo in an ad? If the ad falsely claimed that she was a world champion that would be another story.

I saw this advertisement also. My first thought was that something was photoshopped but on the men's side there was an adam goucher ad with USA uniform on running XC but wearing a boston indoor bib. Basically I think they just used the bibs and had a photo shoot by Nike. Nike does produce the singlets (And adam and kara would have already had a USA clothing set) so it would not have been hard to get their hands on the outfits. I looked pretty hard at both and they were close to perfect and didnt seemed photoshopped.

I wish I could stay as clean as she does running XC!

nike advertising probably doesn't have running geeks working in it to notice these things

not a huge deal, at least its all Kara. Oprah was on TV guide a while back, but only her head. they cropped in someone elses body cause oprah is fat. So at least we dont have Karas head on a random body.

i'll get back to you on the photo's authenticity, i am looking for WMD in iraq right now.

strange thing about Kara is that Nike had invested in her marketing wise even before her bronze at WC. \

There was a decent size poster of her in Nike Outlet Stores..

I remember saying to myself, why doesn't Shalane have her own poster?

One thing you might have missed: the singlet and race bib can't be from the same race. You don't race at USATF in your national team uniform, but rather in your sponsor's.

What a crappy photoshop job. You'd think Nike could do better than that.

Kara actually brought the bib along herself for the photoshoot. The goal was to make it look like an in-competition shot, but Kara wasn't in competition at the time, so this was the closest approximation possible. Kudos to the folks who caught this, but considering even Kara didn't raise an eyebrow about putting a track bib on a jersey and wearing it on a shot intended to look like XC, I don't think many people outside of this thread are worried about this.

To the folks touting the wonders of photoshopping, everything about the photo is real - you'd be surprised how dark and dismal you can make a perfectly dry day look with the right lighting. You'd also be surprised how bad a perfectly good image can look when captured on a camera phone.

Kara has been used a lot by Nike for a variety of mostly obvious reasons, not the least of which is she's on campus nearly every day, and thus available for last-minute photoshoots where it'd be better to have an Olympic-level athlete than some model who doesn't know fartlek from a hole in her...

That's obviously been Photoshopped. Everyone knows she only runs on the zero-gravity treadmill.

Wejo, are you some kind of Nike troll now? For some reason I now want to buy a pair of Nike women's Dri-Fit half-tights...